The Best Day of the Trip So Far...

Today has been the most relaxing days of the trip. So of course it is Sunday, so I wanted to go to church. Fortunately, there is http://www.mormon.org/, where you can look up the times and places of any congregation anywhere in the world. So I looked up La Paz. There were 3 pages of information, and I asked the guy who runs the internet place which of the addresses was the closest. Pretty soon everyone from the whole cybercafe was crowded around my computer telling me to go back to the first page, then to page 2, then back to page 3 and after about ten minutes and much deliberation, the consensus was that the one on 20 de Octubre was the closest. Then I went back to my new room (a whole $2.50 a night) and went to sleep.

I woke up extra early and got ready; I felt pretty sheepish sneaking out of the hippy lair in a white shirt and tie, but it was Sunday morning so not very many of the wild things were stirring. The walk to church was great, gone was the madness of the Saturday market and the only other people about were a few older couples out for their early morning (8 am) walk. I love older people in Latin America, because when you say, ¨Buenos días,¨ they act as if you had just given them a million dollars. They smile and say ¨good morning to you, young man,¨ and want to shake your hand and may God bless you and we hope that your family is okay without you and all of this happens while each party is still walking past, so it´s quite the intense experience.

After a Bolivian breakfast (a piece of bread and a coca tea) I was hoping that no one would see me walking from the coffee shop to the mormon church, but sure enough there were some guys in white shirts and ties that I pretended like I didn´t see. When I got to the church I was talking to some of the members there and it turns out that the guys in the white shirts and ties were also gringos, and also from BYU. This piqued my interest cause Nate, remember, my friend doing research in Sucre who I was going to see but didn´t, was with a big group from BYU. So maybe these guys were from the same group. We went up stairs to one of the meetings going on, and lo and behold, there was Nate! So everyone was surprised and happy, except for the Bolivians until I explained to everyone that I wasn´t with these other gringos, but that it was pure chance that we met up. It turns out that Nate´s internship in Sucre fell through, and he is waiting in La Paz until tomorrow, when he´ll go to another city.

Church was great. The guy who taught one of the lessons is a professional teacher and asked the most amazing questions that really made you think. Someone played the guitar in the Sacrement Meeting, and afterwords a guy with a pin on his jacket that said ¨Don´t Mess With Texas¨ came up and wanted to practice his english with all the gringos, which he most certainly needed. But then we started speaking in Spanish and he was very very articulate, in fact, it turns out that he writes for the Associated Press. So that was cool.

After that, all us gringos went back to the apartment that they are staying in. It´s right in the middle of the most busy street in La Paz, on the eigth floor. That would be like living on Times Square in New York or Center street in Provo, or next to the Pony Express in Ten Sleep. They have a great view of the whole city and carpet and a washing machine and mattresses that aren´t made out of straw. So we went out to eat after that and had a great time.

I hope that you are all well! Thank you very much for the comments, by the way. It has been more lonely than I thought it would be (I don´t know what I was thinking, man I miss my little wife) and it is nice to know that you guys are following along. Colleen (Brian!)- sorry, but I can´t help you out with the Titicaca fishing info. I did stick my fingers in the Lake, and it seemed warmer than I thought it would be. Is that something that fishermen do? One more piece of info about Titicaca- one of its islands is Isla Del Sol, or the Island of the Sun, which is where the Inca creation story supposedly took place. Matt - glad to see you here too, I will definitely call the Solers.

Today really has been a good day. Tomorrow I will get an early start so that I can do all the paper work at the Brazilian and Paraguayan Consulates, and I will probably post again tomorrow because the Brazilian consulate supposedly takes all day to do its thing. Then tomorrow night - the bus to Santa Cruz. Ok, bye!

One More Picture...

Here is one last picture form the top of the hotel. When I woke up at around 8 this morning, that road that you see was completely full of vendors selling fruits, vegetables, fish, flowers, sweaters, RCA cables, knives, and anything else you could ever want. Anyway, I should probably go, I need to find a cheaper place to stay for the night- it cost 5 whole dollars for my place last night.

Ciao

Some Pictures of La Paz...

These are 2 pictures that I took from the roof of the hotel that I stayed at last night. They were taken right at sunset. From the top picture you can sort of make out the shape of the city, which is located at the bottom of a bowl in the mountains. The pictures don´t do justice, however, to the magnitude of the height difference between the top and the bottom of the bowl - around 2,000 ft.

Arriving at La Paz really is breathtaking. After our little boat rides on Titicaca, we traveled for about 3 hours accross a completely flat plain, with mountains off in the distance. If it weren´t for these mountains, the road itself could be in Kansas. The outskirts of the city are the poorer regions, and slowly these began to appear. After about one hour of driving through the slums, with detours down dirt side streets due to strikes and demonstrations blocking the road (all peaceful) the bus turned to the left and we were on the edge of the top of the bowl. We had a complete view of the city. The city itself consists of tall buildings and organization in its center, but as it creeps up the sides of the bowl, it turns brown and chaotic. Richer people live in the older districts at the bottom, and poorer people have filled the bowl to the point of overflowing. The view from the top really was magnificent.

You Need to Move Your Bus Across the Lake? Use My Raft!

Here is a picture of our bus on its little raft. I took it while I was in the boat where all the people had to go. At first I was kind of annoyed about having to get off the bus and pay for another ticket to ride the boat, but when I saw this raft thing I was happy that I wasn´t trapped inside the bus as the raft capsized and it sunk to the bottom of the highest navigable lake in the world. Well, that didn´t exactly happen, but it very well looks like it could have, as evidenced in this picture.

Some other funny things about the bus - this one has ¨Leon de Juda¨airbrushed on the side, which means, ¨Lion of Juda.¨ The owner of the bus seems to be not at all shy about his faith. Also, on the way into La Paz, we passed a big church that had a parking lot full of buses in front of it and a priest was blessing each bus.

My favorite bus thing though, was on the ride out of Lima, when one of the attendants came around and passed out bingo cards! Then he got on the PA system and we all played bingo. The prize? A return ticket to Lima. The winner was invited to give a speech over the PA, in which he fervently thanked the bus company for the excellent entertainment and for the generous prize. He also thanked his family and all of the other passengers for playing. It was great fun.

Pictures!

I found a computer that will let me upload pictures, but it still doesn´t like the title thing very much. Oh well. So here are some pictures. They don´t tell a very complete story of the trip so far, because like I said, I have been on buses a lot. But of the things that I have seen, here is a glimpse into a few of them.






This picture was taken in the Cathedral of Lima, which was built in 1555. The bones were discovered in the 1900´s. There is another famous place full of bones which is called The Monastary of San Francisco, which I am saving for when Jill and I come back to Lima. The Cathedral is the official church building in Peru and consequently all of the important people like the archbishops, the viceroys, and whatnot were buried here. One of the famous guys buried here - Francisco Pizarro.

The Monastary was where everyone else was buried, so consequently there are a ton of bones there. None of this is news to Jacque and Brandon.

In this picture you can see many things.

1. This is a picture of the crossing that our bus did at Copacabana, Bolivia, which is located on Lake Titicaca, the ¨highest commerically navigable lake in the world,¨according to Wikipedia. This was a funny crossing because we weren´t told anything about getting off the bus beforehand. All of a sudden the bus came to a stop at the shore and the driver´s assistant announced that the bus would be going across on a barge and that we would be going across on a boat. We had to get off the bus and buy a ticket for like 50 cents to take a little boat across. This picture was taken after we had gotten off the bus and while we were waiting to get on little boats to take us across the lake. So you can see the little boat that we rode in with the Bolivian flag on it. Also, you can see that the other side was not very far. We were probably in the boat for like 10 minutes.

2. Prominent in the picture is the Bolivian Naval Seaman. Or maybe we could call him Lakeman since Boivia doesn´t have access to the sea.

3. You can also see the two ladies in the foreground of the picture with their boweler hats. Every woman over 30 and about 50 percent of the women over 20 wear the traditional hiked up skirt, little jackets made of wool, a woolen shawl, and 2 long braids and a bowler hat, just like in National Geographic. I didn´t want to just take a picture of them in the street ´cause that would be rude, so that is why I point them out in this picture.

I Found a Title for the Poor Little Orphan Entry...

For some reason, this computer won´t let me put a title on this blog. If I could, though, I would give it the title, A Change of Plans. I got into La Paz, Bolivia last night at 6.00. I was planning on going taking a bus to visit my friend Nate in Sucre while I waited for the Brazilian and Parguayan consulates to open on Monday. For some reason I thought that Sucre was only 8 hours from La Paz, which wouldn´t be so bad on an overnight bus. It turns out that Sucre is 16 hours from La Paz, and I don´t really feel like being on a bus for 32 hours this weekend just so I can be with Nate for like 10 hours. Sorry, Nate.

I am also dissapointed, because I wanted to go to Potosí, which is really close to Sucre, but I won´t be able to now. Oh, well, I guess that just means another trip, which we could call, Bolivia 2009. Or something like that. So I am stuck here in La Paz for the weekend, but it will be good, though, because I can do a bunch of research over the internet today and rest a lot tomorrow.

As I have been on buses for the past 3 days, I have mainly only met other tourists, which is neat, but I am not exactly experiencing Peru and Bolivia. Most of the other people on the buses are Europeans. It´s interesting. Everyone is really laid back and willing to chat for the whole bus ride pretty much. In every one of the conversations that I have had so far the topic of ¨where else in South America have you been¨ comes up and I always tell everyone that I lived in Paraguay for 2 years. And then they ask why, and of course I tell them that I was a missionary. And then they scoot a little further away from me and I tell them that I was a Mormon missionary and they scoot even further away. Then they look really worried and uncomfortable for a little bit, then I tell them about the church and what exactly it was that I did in Paraguay and they scoot back closer and we get along fine again. They always say, ¨but you don´t look like a Mormon,¨ which I don´t know if that is because they expect all Mormons to be wearing a white shirt and a tie or if it´s cause of the ultra-hip beard I´m growing.

I am trying not to enjoy myself too much, because Jill is working so hard back home. I always tell everyone that my wife always makes fun of me because she graduated before me, but now she is the one that has to work while I get to claim student status and vagabond around South America. Not that I´m really vagabonding, the buses are really nice. Maybe I´ll feel like I´m vagabonding when I ride the ¨Death Train¨from Santa Cruz to Corumba or on the boat ride down the Paraguayan river.

I was going to post some of the pictures that I have taken so far, but I just figured out that this computer not only doesn´t like titles, it also doesn´t like pictures. So I will find a different computer today and will do another post and put up some pictures. By the way, La Paz is at 15,000 feet. I think that is the highest that I have been while still touching the ground. I have a little bit of a headache and everytime I blow my nose it is a little bloody. But other than that I feel fine. Just had to think of a way to end this post while talking about boogers. Ciao

From Lima!

Hola dese Lima! I´m here and safe and sound and happy. Right now it is about 12 thirty, I leave for Bolivia at four oclock.

Here in Lima it is wintertime, and everything is very foggy. It is not cold, though. I am right in the center of Lima at a kind of walking mall with 2 friends from Germany. My flight got in at midnight last night and the original plan was to stay the night in the airport but it was so crazy that I decided to just get a room for the night. I saw two other guys with backpacks and asked them what they were doing for the night. They were cool and I wasn´t getting a creepy vibe from them, so we decided to look for a place together. We found a place in Miraflores, which is kind of a suberb of Lima for $10 each. It was great, it was more expensive than other places in the guidebook, but we had our own bathroom and everything.

One of the guys is a policeman from a little town called Memmingen in Bavaria. Memmingen is the town I stayed in when I went to Germany with Randy two years ago! The other one is going to be a math and religion teacher in primary school.

It is so nice to be able to talk to everyone! The taxi drivers, people on the street, everyone is so friendly. I will tell you next time about the Panamanian lawyer and the Columbian synchronized swimming team that I sat next to on the plane ride down. We have to go right now, but I will do another post soon! Ciao!

A quick note

I rode our scooter up to campus to return some library books that I had checked out and stopped to do this blog entry on the way. Jill and I are running around trying to get things ready to go. We had a great morning today, we slept in till 9 then Jill made a great omelet while I cleaned up the house. My flight leaves tomorrow at 7:00 AM so we are trying to get in all the together time now that we can.

Last night Jill and I drove up to my sister Colleen's house to see her family and my other sister Jacque, who had driven down with her family. Kelli, Colleen's daughter, gave me a paper airplane that she had folded and decorated so that I could give it to one of the "sick little kids on your trip, to cheer them up." It was quite sweet and I for sure will take it down. There were amazing hamburgers, the requisite board games, and lots of playing with the nieces and nephews and the dog Liberty. I have a great family, and am sad to miss my other sister Annie and her family, who drove out from Maine to see Mom and Dad in Wyoming this week.

I guess taking this trip has helped me to realize how much there is to do all the time. As in, now that I am going and can't be here, I am all of a sudden thinking of all these things that I would like to do, like go camping in southern Utah, hang out with family more, hang out with my old roommates more, and probably stuff like study for the MCAT and stuff like that should be on the list too. Anyway, it's kind of funny that getting out and doing something big makes me miss all of the little stuff that I don't do often enough while I can.

I am excited for the trip, though. Thanks Mom and Dad for the comment that you posted. I love all you guys and please watch for the next post, which will be coming from the Southern Hemisphere. Ciao.

On an unrelated note...

Jill and I went up to Deer Creek Reservoir today and "swam like cute little fishes" in the words of Jill. The lake was kinda stinky, so I couldn't stop thinking about bacteria trying to break into our bodies through whichever opening they could find. Other than that, though, there was a great view of some of the remnants of one of the snow fields on Mt. Timpanogos. Which reminds me, the other day I was shadowing Dr. Patton in the ER at Utah Valley and a kid got flown in on a life flight from Mt. Timpanogos because he had an arm injury. And not a serious one, as in he walked off of the Life Flight helicopter and into the ER.

Tonight we are going out with some friends to a Brazilian restaurant and a jazz club in SLC. The restaurant is having a grand opening so we're counting on cheap eats, plus it will get our South American juices flowing so we can hit the ground running. Anyway, we don't have much time today. Thanks to Mark, Colleen, and Emily, who have all posted comments so far. We hope you all keep coming back. Ciao.

Why the trip?

The short answer to that question is twofold, or perhaps three or many fold, like a paper airplane. Ooohh, I like that metaphor, "this trip is like a paper airplane, that, when folded carefully and in a certain way, will only ultimately crash into the ground." Hmmm...or maybe not. But anyway, here are those reasons as to answer why.

First off, we both love to travel. It works out well for me that Jill grew up traveling and feels the need to be somewhere else. Paraguay is a special place for us, though, because for two years I lived there as a missionary and as a result feel a deep connection to all things Paraguayan; I still dream on a regular basis about my Paraguayan friends. Jill went to Japan as a missionary, so she understands that weird concept of feeling at home in a strange place, and wants to explore that part of my life. (a future trip to Japan would only be proper...)

Second, I want to do service abroad. Let's face it folks...we live in a very unjust world. You know, the whole "a few have a lot and a lot have not." I don't expect to fix that problem through my efforts on this little trip or by lofty, unrealistic goals of living life completely for others, for that matter. There will always be injustices, in fact, but why should that stop any of us from sharing what we have?

Third, Jill and I made a list of things to do in life and see Machu Picchu was on there. Everybody's got a list like that, whether it's a real list in a notebook somewhere or if it's the digital version in your head. There will always be reasons not to go to Machu Picchu, but there are always plenty of reasons not to do anything. In the words of Tim Robbins in the Shawshank Redemption, you've got to either "get busy livin' or get busy dyin'."

So there are some of the "why's" of the trip. Man, we need to think of a cooler word for it than trip. Like odyssey, or journey, or epic adventure, or the bus bum breaker, or something like that.